A few weeks ago we celebrated National Stitch Day here in the UK. Naturally, my local branch of the Embroiderers Guild had to be involved!
It will be the Branch's 20th Anniversary this year so they are celebrating with an Afternoon Tea Party later this month. They decided to keep with the Afternoon Tea theme and host an Open Day for the National Stitch Day celebrations with the projects all being Afternoon Tea related.
First up though we were asked to create lengths of bunting to hang around the town to advertise the Open Day.
We were given a template for the triangle bunting that you can see in the background, but I decided to come up with something a little bit different as you can see!
I unpicked the pockets from several old shirts, then appliqued letters spelling out Big Stitch and the name of the hall onto the shirt pockets. Some of the letters were machine blanket stitched and some hand stitched to reflect both of the interests of the EG members.
They looked quite effective flapping in the breeze :)
Inside the hall members were busy stitching up and embroidering chocolates, cupcakes and doughnut pincushions. The doughnut pincushion above is made from a tea-dyed white sock with the toe cut off and then rolled around some toy stuffing. The end is stitched down and then a scrap of white felt is stitched over the join. I chose to embellish my doughnut with lots of brown seed beads to resemble chocolate sprinkles as you can see :)
As I was manning the door this was the only project that I had time to make!
It is also the closest that I will get to a doughnut as I really don't like them. Childhood memories of seeing doughnuts sizzling in large pans of oil on a weekend trip to Blackpool have scarred me for life as far as eating them is concerned. Isn't it funny how some experiences can have such a long lasting effect? Fortunately I have never come across anything in the chocolate making process that has had a similar effect upon me :)
What about you? Are you a doughnut fan or not?
